“Sit.” Leo motions to the large tufted chair in front of the fireplace. Since my legs are feeling a little wooden, I sit and wonder what the hell is going on. I feel a little better when Leo sits in the matching chair across from me, a small glass table between us. He leans back and studies me until I feel like my lungs are about to explode.
“Are there any other lies you have told me?”
As an opening, I have no idea why it hurts so badly. Why tears come out of nowhere. I blink them back, he has every right to ask the question, and I have no right to be hurt by it. “I’m not sure how much it matters, Natalie was my neighbor and at the time my best friend when she urged me to take the job. But we haven’t spoken since before she left.”
“If you ever lie to me again, I do not care how fucking small it is, before I am done with you, you will want to cut your tongue off rather than lie again.”
The promised violence chills me. “Never.” My throat tightens around the word.
For a long minute, he’s quiet. “When I fire you, you will get no recommendation from me. You will receive no severance and no pity from me. No matter what your decision is, know that. Your choice is simple, you agree that I own you. You belong to me. You will be available to me to fuck anyway I wish whenever I wish for as long as I want you and you will keep your position. If you choose not to give me access to your body, then you will remain in my employ for the two weeks it takes you to train your successor then you will be fired. The decision is yours.”
He’s doing that thing, that ice running through his veins thing like he does when he goes in for the kill for something he wants. I shiver at the way he says it. He’ll own me, whenever, however, he wants, I’m his. I look around the room. I know why we’re here I just need him to say it, to lay out how this is going to go. “Why are we here?”
“Because this is where we will meet. I have no desire to deal with your psychotic cat and I sure as hell do not want you in my home.” He sets the keycard on the table between us. “This is your key. I have my own. You can come and go as you please. I have booked it for sixty days, the usual period I maintain an exclusive sexual interest. This will be exclusive, you go near another man I will make sure you both learn the meaning of the word agony.”